New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday, January 21, took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi after US President Donald Trump repeated his claim of ending the India-Pakistan conflict last year, saying the number of times the PM’s “good friend and the recipient of his many forced hugs” has declared that he was responsible for the sudden halt of Operation Sindoor has shot up to 70 now.
The opposition party’s swipe came after Trump touted ending the conflict between India and Pakistan as among the accomplishments of the first year of his second term in the White House, saying the two countries “were going to go nuclear” in his opinion, and that he saved millions of lives by stopping the war.
Trump said he ended “eight unendable wars in 10 months”.
In a post on X, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said, “Before yesterday the count stood at 68. Yesterday itself the count shot up not to 69 but to 70 – once in the opening statement of his White House Press Conference and later in the Q&A.”
“That is the number of times the PM’s ‘good friend’ and the recipient of his many forced hugs has declared that he was responsible for the sudden and unexpected halt of Operation Sindoor on May 10, 2025,” Ramesh said.
At a press conference in Washington, Trump said, “These were unendable wars – Cambodia and Thailand fighting for years, Kosovo and Serbia, the Congo and Rwanda. Pakistan and India, they were really going at it. Eight planes shot down. They were going to go nuclear in my opinion.”
Addressing a packed White House press briefing room, Trump said, “the prime minister of Pakistan, who visited him in Washington last year, said that ‘President Trump saved 10 million people, and maybe much more than that’.They’re both nuclear countries.”
Later in the press conference, which lasted 105 minutes, Trump again claimed credit for ending the war between India and Pakistan.
Responding to a question on how winning the Nobel Peace Prize would have improved the lives of average everyday Americans, Trump said he saved probably tens of millions of lives by ending eight wars around the world.
“If you add up the numbers, just if you look at any one of those wars, you’re talking about millions of people. You multiply it eight times. But when you look at India and Pakistan, that could have been 10,15,20 million people. It could have been more than that. So I saved millions of people. So that to me is the big thing,” Trump said.
Trump has claimed several times that he stopped the conflict between India and Pakistan, an assertion he has been making repeatedly, on various platforms in the US and around the world, since May 10 last year when he announced on social media that India and Pakistan agreed to a full and immediate ceasefire after a long night of talks mediated by Washington.
India has consistently denied any third-party intervention.
Trump also said that he should have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the wars, including between Israel and Iran, Egypt and Ethiopia, and Armenia and Azerbaijan.
